


In parallel

by Aegiswarrior



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Character Study, F/F, chapter 1 is baby priestess liadrin & baby ranger sylvanas, chapter 2 is blood knight matriarch liadrin & warchief sylvanas, mild violence in chapter 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:21:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22893172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aegiswarrior/pseuds/Aegiswarrior
Summary: Liadrin healing Sylvanas, before and after everything changes
Relationships: Liadrin/Sylvanas Windrunner
Comments: 2
Kudos: 37





	1. Chapter 1

The sword is swung at Liadrin’s head, and she throws herself to one side, avoiding it by mere inches. But her wild dodge has her fumbling for her footing, and the next strike clips her ear, leaving Liadrin reeling back. She nearly loses her balance entirely, take a step too far on the uneven ground, on loose, dew-wet leaves. But she grounds herself in the last second, and the heavy training sword in Liadrin’s hands is real enough for her to centre her focus on, and she lets the still lingering pain of the blow wash over her, to drift away like leaves stolen by a fast-moving river.

Liadrin regains her stance, loose but ready, not quite the unmoving steel of a warrior but not quite the feline grace of a ranger either, but something else, something flexible but unbreakable, like the cord of a whip pulled taut. And she looks back up at the girl before her.

Something about her stance, the barely hidden fury in her expression, makes Sylvanas laugh. She stalks around Liadrin, always at the same distance, circling around her and tilting her head when Liadrin twists and follows. There’s another sword in her hands, a blunted steel thing, and while it has no edge to slice with, Liadrin knows well the pain that comes with any blow from it. Especially when Sylvanas uses it as more club than sword, and never once pulls her blows.

Liadrin is only glad Sylvanas agreed to use a weapon neither of them is familiar with. Even the thought of the arrows she would otherwise be riddled with makes her shudder.

“I never realised priestesses could hold swords.” Sylvanas drawls. Her words are slow and careless, but her movements aren’t. She moves like a lynx, like a creature with violent grace in its blood. “I was sure it would burn you to touch something so dangerous.”

Liadrin bares her teeth at her, and Sylvanas laughs again, low and mocking. Liadrin can recognise bait when she sees it, and she knows Sylvanas is only trying to set her off balance. But that doesn’t stop her words from crawling under Liadrin’s skin, and doesn’t stop her reaction from showing so blatantly in her expression, her frame, and she knows just from the satisfied glint in Sylvanas’ eyes that she sees it too.

“And all rangers make love to trees.” Liadrin tells her, catching the brief storm that passes over Sylvanas’ expression. “Whose rumours are you listening to?”

Sylvanas starts to answer, pauses in place and has the echo of words forming on her lips, only to sweep forward before a word is spoken, swing a broad strike at Liadrin’s knees that Liadrin only just recognises in time to block. There’s a smile on her face, wide enough to be almost feral. Liadrin almost gives in to temptation, considers hurling another caustic set of words her way, but she holds herself back. Sylvanas wants her to lose control, she thinks, to lose composure and give in to blind anger.

Instead, Liadrin swings her sword up, feigns a downward strike only to shift at the last minute, send the pommel within striking distance of Sylvanas’ temple. But Sylvanas only jumps nimbly back, and returns to her graceful stalking, watching Liadrin with little suggestion of her next move.

Above them, the trees of Eversong watch quietly, letting the occasional leaf drift down, giving them a bed of dead leaves to dance on. Sylvanas had been the one to insist on them taking this outside when Liadrin had asked her to help her train, dragging Liadrin deep within the forest to a clearing Liadrin doesn’t know, and which she doubts she could find her way back to Silvermoon from. But it’s quiet, and even the wind is silent for them and their duel. And it is beautiful too, in that familiar way Eversong always is. Eternal, constant above all else, a forest Liadrin knows in her lifeblood. Even if she may not know all its paths, or even a handful of the secrets Sylvanas does.

Now, watching the grace with which Sylvanas moves across it, none of her steps so much as disturbing a single leaf, Liadrin knows she made a mistake letting Sylvanas chose the location of their duel.

Sylvanas is at home here, and even if she is about as used to handling a sword as Liadrin is, she has the agility to make up for it. Liadrin’s training so far has only tangentially touched martial training, and as much as her instincts beg her to reach for the Light, Liadrin can only imagine how Sylvanas would lambast her for cheating if she even tried.

“What will you tell the Ranger-General when a priestess beats you?” Liadrin taunts, and grips her sword tighter when Sylvanas takes the bait, swings her sword in a wide sweep towards Liadrin’s left side.

She’s fast. Much too fast for Liadrin to dodge properly, so she doesn’t try. Instead she catches the strike on her left arm, grits her teeth against the burst of pain, and slams the flat of her sword against Sylvanas’ sword hand. Sylvanas swears loudly and drops her sword, jumps back when Liadrin throws one more swing at her.

Liadrin’s arm hurts far more than she’d expected it too. She has no armour on, and what she wears is little more than thin cloth that does nothing to shield her from the pain. And while their swords may be blunted, they are still cold steel, and Laidrin’s arm already feels numb.

But the advantage was worth it.

She steps over Sylvanas’ sword, and presses forward, keeping herself between it and Sylvanas. Sylvanas might be more familiar with this environment, might know how to move without making a sound, but even she would struggle unarmed.

Sylvanas keeps a steady distance between them, rubbing her injured hand with the other. Her long ears are pinned close to her head, but she shoots Liadrin a toothed smile when she asks her if she wants to surrender.

“Interesting strategy.” Sylvanas tells her still. “Would you use it in a real war?”

“Only if I didn’t want to keep my arm.”

Sylvanas spins her around, moves out of reach as soon as Liadrin comes close. Her acrobatics are impressive, but surely tiring. Liadrin only needs her to tire by a fraction in order to catch her. Even through all Sylvanas’ dodges, she keeps her injured hand close to her, frequently soothing it with the other hand. At first, Liadrin assumed Sylvanas was only trying to trick her, but even at a glance her hand has reddened horribly. From the way she holds it, it may even be broken.

It’s enough to make guilt spear through her. Liadrin hadn’t meant to hurt her, not so seriously. She hadn’t even thought her actions through before she acted, only charged forward on instinct. And a bruised arm is a small trade for a broken hand, especially for an archer.

When Sylvanas charges forward, she takes Liadrin by surprise. She ducks under Liadrin’s sword, and dives in with an uppercut to Liadrin’s stomach, winding her and causing Liadrin to stagger backwards. Liadrin takes another wild swing at Sylvanas, and from this close, she can only barely dodge it, and she hisses as even a half-dodged blow hits her shoulder.

But she doesn’t retreat this time. She swings another punch at Liadrin’s jaw, again with her left hand, but she telegraphs her punch too well, and Liadrin manages to dart backwards to avoid it.

But she has lost track of her surroundings. Sylvanas’ endless dancing and turning have spun her around, and as Liadrin places her right foot down into what should be a stable spot, it lands on smooth steel instead. Sylvanas’ sword slips under her weight, taking Liadrin with it, and she lands heavily on the ground.

There she groans, and doesn’t resist as Sylvanas snatches up her sword from the ground and points it at her neck.

“Do you yield?”

Liadrin hesitates for a moment, but she still responds. “I do.”

“That was close.” Sylvanas admits. Her stance has loosened, but she still points the blunt sword at Liadrin, revels in her victory for a moment longer. “I’m sure you’ll give any troll a good dance.”

“I doubt any of them would try that sword trick of yours.”

“Maybe not.” Sylvanas hesitates a moment longer, and when she speaks again her tone is deadly serious. “But if it does happen. You’re a priestess. They’ll target you. But they’ll also underestimate you.”

She lets Liadrin suffer on the cold ground for a moment longer before she tosses her sword aside, and offers Liadrin her hand. She takes it, but Sylvanas doesn’t pull her up just yet. Just hovers over her, her eyes sharp and cutting.

An even sharper smile slices onto Sylvanas’ lips. “Let them.” She says.

And just as Sylvanas is beginning to pull her upwards, Liadrin tugs down, and sweeps Sylvanas’ legs out from beneath her.

Sylvanas lands with an elbow in Liadrin’s gut, just hard enough to make her splutter for a moment, to grab desperately at the air that has forsaken her while Sylvanas pins her to the ground in a hold Liadrin knows brute strength won’t free her from.

She tries, anyway.

“You’re worse than my sisters.” Sylvanas hisses. “Vereesa is _four_ and she’s less childish than you!”

She tries to point at Liadrin accusingly, but her right hand is still swollen and red, and it refuses to obey her. Sylvanas still waves it about, regardless, wincing as she tries to curl her fingers into shape.

“Let me up.” Liadrin orders. Surprisingly, Sylvanas does, relenting her hold and letting Liadrin sit up. She still tries to snatch her hand away when Liadrin reaches for it, but a stern look is all it takes to have her relent to that too.

Her hand is a mess. Liadrin must have hit it far harder than she realised, because even after a quick glance she can tell at least one of the small, complicated bones in her hand must have broken. What skin isn’t swollen is bruised, and the colour is changing fast, and horribly so. Liadrin holds her hand as gently as she can, examines it like she has been trained too, but even then, flashes of pain shoot across Sylvanas’ expression, and her jaw clenches every time Liadrin so much as brushes the worst areas.

“I’m sorry for this.” Liadrin makes herself admit.

“I told you not to hold back.” Sylvanas tells her, her voice strained. “I didn’t.”

“But this is…”

“I’ll get someone to look at it as soon as we get back.”

“No.” Liadrin says. She traps Sylvanas’ hand between two of hers, closes her eyes and breathes deep. Summoning the Light is different here, when she needs it, to every time she did it in her lessons. There, she had as much time as she needed, and teachers to advise if something went wrong. Here it’s just her, and Liadrin has to concentrate to block out the guilt, and fear, that try to rush through her mind like a storm.

Liadrin summons it from within herself, feels it flood her veins, and then she focuses it, drives it towards one, unbroken path, and it fills her hands, floods into Sylvanas. She can feel her hand shift and change from within her grip, but she doesn’t let go, not until every bone has settled into place, every bruise has faded away, and all swelling has abandoned her.

Wordlessly, Sylvanas takes her hand back, turns it back and forth, admiring it. There’s something strange in her eyes by the time she looks back, something unspoken but soft.

“Heal yourself next.” Sylvanas says.


	2. Chapter 2

“I’m fine.” Sylvanas growls. But Liadrin ignores her, and kneels by her side in the dirt. Even in daylight her eyes glow bright gold, and she challenges Sylvanas’ insistence with a stare of her own. But Sylvanas doesn’t need to blink, and she matches it second for second until Liadrin breaks.

“There’s a spear impaled in your stomach.” Liadrin says, her voice neutral. But despite it, she stays close, uses herself like a shield to keep Sylvanas out of view of the other soldiers. That Sylvanas appreciates. But not enough to put into words, not when Liadrin is still trying to force her to stay.

“Let me remove it then.” Sylvanas says.

“No.” Liadrin says. “You will not.”

Sylvanas turns her glare on her, her head tilted high and proud, and her eyes burrowing deep. There is always a weakness to be found in someone’s armour, some hidden crack, some unspoken vulnerability for her to slip a knife into. Family, duty, regrets. There’s always something. But Liadrin keeps herself guarded, has armour wrapped around her heart and body both.

“You remove it,” Sylvanas grinds out finally, “if you must.”

Liadrin moves in closer, closer than most would dare. She reaches out for the spear, only to hesitate after a moment, and she waits there until Sylvanas grudgingly nods for her to continue. Her touch is careful, and she examines both the spear and the dark wound in Sylvanas’ side, careful not to touch her skin.

“It’s gone too deep.” Liadrin tells her, ignoring the look Sylvanas shoots her way. “We need to move somewhere else for this.”

“Remove it now.” Sylvanas orders.

Liadrin matches her gaze, and doesn’t flinch from it. “No.”

Sylvanas grits her teeth together, and suppresses the desire to bare her teeth, or rise up from the ground wreathed in shadow and smoke. It might have worked on some of the flightier healers, the ones who find excuse after excuse to flee her presence. Not Liadrin, forged from stubborn steel.

“Fine.” Sylvanas tells her, her voice smooth and strong, like this is a command and not a loss. She considers biting out something else, another deflection to make her feel stronger. But Liadrin is already leaning down to carefully pull Sylvanas to her feet. Her hands press against her armour, and Sylvanas can feel the ghost of the touch reach through. But it doesn’t last long, and by the time she is standing again she once more considers trying to run.

But if Liadrin is stubborn in one thing she would be stubborn in all, and Sylvanas can picture Liadrin hunting her down. And even the small movement so far has reminded her of the steel in her gut, and while pain doesn’t hit her quite like it used to, she can still feel it grinding against her insides.

Liadrin puts both hands against the shaft, and her hands glow as the wood snaps under her hands. She throws the broken shaft away, but leaves the rest buried in her.

She swings her arm around Sylvanas’ shoulders as they start, supporting all the weight Sylvanas lets her. At first, it’s not much, and she has her mind set on keeping it that way, on matching Liadrin’s insistence to help with her own insistence on her own strength. But there is still steel buried in her gut, and as much as she would like to pretend otherwise, her sense of pain is not as dulled as she’d like it to be. She leans into the strength of Liadrin’s arms more and more, until Liadrin is nearly carrying her. Even the thought of that has Sylvanas bristling, but at least Liadrin doesn’t try to lift her.

Still. Sylvanas wonders when Liadrin got so strong, to bear the weight of her arms and armour and Sylvanas besides. Maybe she honed it in the years since they last worked together. Or maybe she hid her strength behind a shield of priest’s robes for all those years. It’s not an easy answer to uncover, and even as the words rise up her throat to sear on her lips, Sylvanas buries them back down, and bears the shame in silence.

Liadrin doesn’t take her to the healer’s tents, but to Sylvanas’ personal tent, saving her from being stared at by a hundred of her own soldiers. For that she’s almost grateful enough to speak on, to consider giving Liadrin her thanks. But she doesn’t, and tears herself out from Liadrin’s help in order to enter under her own power, letting the tent close shut behind her.

Liadrin follows, without asking.

“You have me trapped, Lady of Light.” Sylvanas bites out, letting her words rumble out of her throat. “What a privilege.”

“Sit.” Liadrin commands.

Of Sylvanas’ personal things, she has little furniture. She has no bed, nor bedroll, nothing but the hardest of oak chairs she could find, left for the times she must chain herself to the tedium of paperwork. Apart from it, and her desk, there is little else left in her tent. A small bag of extra weapons, a spare quiver of arrows. Nothing more.

Sylvanas considers sinking to the ground itself, just to be petty, but she doubts Liadrin would care. She sits on the old wooden chair instead, and tilts her head up high to meet Liadrin’s gaze. She could be rude and acerbic, she thinks, but the sooner Liadrin is satisfied the sooner she will leave.

Liadrin kneels at Sylvanas’ feet, and for a moment Sylvanas freezes in place, fighting to keep her face blank and clean of expression. But Liadrin ruins it, reaching up to prod the rough edges of Sylvanas’ wound, her touch ungentle. But Sylvanas ignores it, and forges herself a mask of ice.

“Take your armour off.” Liadrin says.

“There are easier ways to satisfy your curiosity.” Sylvanas says rather than obeying. “If you are so lonely, you only have to ask.”

“I see your tongue hasn’t been injured.” Liadrin says dryly. “Take it off.”

“As my lady commands.” Sylvanas says, forcing her hands to move, her fingers to catch at ties, and buckles and seals. She wants to go slow, to keep this from sinking under the armour of her skin, but with every piece of armour she removes, the more vulnerable she feels under Liadrin’s sharp gaze, her all too curious eyes. They don’t stay on Sylvanas’ wound, but scan all of her, all her scars, all the evidence of her undeath.

She cuts into her like a sword, staring like that. Sylvanas would prefer Liadrin to just stab her and be done with it, and not just watch her with that terrifyingly neutral expression, uncovering all the injuries she bears, both in her old life and those new ones she gained since.

Sylvanas had not realised how much she would hate this, until now. Until Liadrin reaches for her once more, knelt at her feet but all the more powerful for it, touching her skin and tracing up the lines of old scars. Even dead her body tries to betray her, wants to shake under Liadrin’s touch, but Sylvanas controls it with an iron grip.

 _Don’t touch me,_ Sylvanas wants to spit. _Get out. Leave me. Never look at me again._

But she doesn’t, and she lets her touch her for several moments, until Liadrin’s hand traces up her chest to the half-healed hole in her chest where Frostmourne had pierced her all those years ago, and Sylvanas finally slaps her hand away. Sense and control leave her and all that remains is a panic that burns like ice in her already frozen heart, and it takes a long tortuous second more before Sylvanas can hide her emotions again.

“Forgive me.” Liadrin murmurs. Sylvanas keeps her thoughts chained under steel. She wants to tell Liadrin to hurry up, or to just leave now, but she doesn’t trust her own words.

Liadrin reaches again, moves slower when Sylvanas tenses, but her movement is as inevitable as an avalanche, and Sylvanas doesn’t try to stop her. She touches Sylvanas’ wound, and she is almost thankful for the shallow, deadened pain that sparks from it. She touches the fragment of spear, and the rough wound around it, touches and touches and touches, until Sylvanas would rather bear another spear than have her hands press against her again.

But she remains still. The sooner Liadrin is done, the sooner Sylvanas can be alone.

Liadrin’s hands burn. Against the graveyard chill of Sylvanas’ skin she is a bonfire, and even the mortal heat of her is enough to brand Sylvanas, until she is sure she will find the burnt imprint of her hands left on her long after this is done. She still wants her to hurry, but Liadrin has never been anything but thorough.

She remembers all too well the press of Liadrin’s hands while she had been alive. But Liadrin’s hands had never been hot enough to burn then. They had only been warm, comfortably warm, a welcome relief from whatever battlefield Sylvanas had been dragged from.

Liadrin had almost always insisted on being the one to heal her in those days. Sylvanas had never complained about that, even after she finally noticed. Liadrin was gentle, good at her task, and pleasant to look at. Why complain at something that benefited them both?

Liadrin’s hand brushes against Sylvanas’ lower stomach, and she has a flash of a memory. Of something from decades upon decades ago, some fancy event Kael’thas had insisted she attend. It was a distraction from more important things, but Sylvanas had been a bit of a peacock in those days, and the chance to charm a few uptight nobles was amusing, to say the least.

But she had enjoyed a scandal all the more, and dancing with the comparatively drab priestess had sent whispers whirling around Silvermoon for months.

Liadrin had been nothing more than a tool, then, and Sylvanas had slipped away from her all too soon, to go disturb her sisters and ruin their chances with whatever partners they were trying to charm that night.

Regardless of whether Liadrin still remembers or if she still cares, it’s all too late to apologise. And Sylvanas doubts Liadrin would like to hear the words from her lips. Not now. Not from her.

“Hold still.” Liadrin says. Sylvanas obeys this time, at least until Liadrin’s hands glow and press against the hole in her side, and a searing pain stabs into her like a white-hot brand. Worse than when Liadrin had just been prodding at it, worse still than when she’d been stabbed to begin with. Sylvanas can’t stop herself flinching, and she can hear a small but desperate noise escape her throat.

“Does that hurt?” Liadrin asks.

“No.”

Liadrin doesn’t look convinced, but she keeps going. She wraps one hand around the wreckage of the spear, and the other just beside where it sticks into Sylvanas. “Normally the Light dulls the pain.” She explains, as the hand against Sylvanas’ skin begins to glow and burn again.

“Get it done.” Sylvanas growls.

Liadrin nods, and sets Sylvanas’ body on fire. Every nerve burns, even those she considered long dead, and she barely notices Liadrin carefully push the spear through her to pierce the other side, while her Light wars with the very powers that keep Sylvanas functioning. But she can see her skin knitting back together, healing the path behind the spearhead as it moves through her.

Liadrin reaches around her, and draws the spear head out. She drops it on the ground, and places both hands over Sylvanas’ stomach, one now coated in ichor. But Sylvanas doesn’t care enough to complain, and when the pain stabs her hard enough, she covers both of Liadrin’s hands with one of hers.

The glow around Liadrin’s hands fades, and Sylvanas can feel herself involuntarily relax against her will. It’s one more piece in a puzzle Sylvanas would prefer Liadrin to never solve. A knowledge that cuts a slice too close to her heart, sinks in like a blade under her skin. Years ago, she might have been willing to bear Liadrin knowing one of her weaknesses, but that was a lifetime ago for both of them. And Sylvanas had trusted a stubborn priestess, and not this woman still kneeling in front of her, hidden behind layers upon layers of steel, who heals as well as she kills.

Liadrin stops touching her, and Sylvanas withdraws her hand like she has been burnt. Sylvanas is sure Liadrin will take the opportunity to strike at her while she is down, or to at least try at something with her words. But Liadrin holds her tongue, and wipes her hands clean with a rag.

“You shouldn’t have any issues.” Liadrin says, rising to her feet. “But I will check on you in a few days just to be sure.”

She pauses, and Sylvanas catches her looking down at her. Even in the shadow of the tent, Liadrin is resplendent in her armour, tall and unbroken. Next to her, Sylvanas is a shirtless corpse, her nature harder to hide with her skin bared. But Sylvanas has borne the burden of the disgusted looks people send her way, and has never let the impact of a single one show, not even when it came from the sister she once loved.

“Is that agreeable?” Liadrin asks.

The prospect isn’t pleasant. Liadrin stripping her of armour and of pride, and maybe even burning her with the Light again. Sylvanas doesn’t want Liadrin to come back, to look at her with disgust, or pity, or both. And there is something all too intense about the way she touches her, even when she is not channelling the Light. But then again, Sylvanas isn’t sure how long it has been since one of the living has touched her, and not tried to kill her in the process. Too long. And the last time it had happened had ended up an awful memory, the kind that sticks in Sylvanas’ mind when the night is long and she doesn’t have enough work to focus her mind on.

But Liadrin has done nothing wrong, even Sylvanas has to admit that. And the mere fact that she bothered to ask means more than anything.

“You may.” Sylvanas says. Then, just to shield herself, she bares a sharp smile. “I await your return, Lady Liadrin.”

Liadrin frowns slightly, has her head tilted to the side for a moment. But she still turns, and begins to leave. Whatever else she is now; she is not a woman tempted to stay in the company of someone like Sylvanas. But few are. And none call themselves living.

She is nearly gone entirely, slipped out and run off to whatever other duty calls her, when Sylvanas rethinks herself. Liadrin has been stubborn, insistent and commanding, but she has not been cruel. She didn’t have to heal Sylvanas, or bear any of her biting words.

“Liadrin?” She says, and Liadrin stops at her call, her hand brushing the exit. “Thank you.”

She has to tear the words from her teeth, reluctant with each one. But she can see Liadrin pause a moment more, can see some of the subtle tension in her shoulders melt.

“I’ll be back later, Warchief.” Liadrin says, her voice too quiet to read emotion in.

And she’s gone.

* * *

The night is cold, and the edge of the forest is filled with the splinters of trees, more casualties of war. But Sylvanas hadn’t cared when she told her soldiers to cut them down to make their camp, and she doesn’t care now. She steps over wooden shrapnel and continues deeper in, until she can lie to herself and say that she is lost, even though she can still see the looming shadow of the hill above, and the guiding stars above that. But this forest she doesn’t know, as foreign to her as each of the other hundreds she has passed through in the past few years.

It’s heavy and thick, once she is swallowed into it. Heavy old trees, thick about the waist but unbent and unbroken. Sylvanas stops at one, with gnarled bark and a hollow set high in its trunk, where most nights a bird must shelter.

Tonight, it is cold and empty.

She pulls her gauntlet off of her right hand, and presses her palm against the bark, hard enough to feel every ridge of it. It’s cold, but no colder than she is. In the moonlight, half shadowed by clouds, colour flees from the forest, leaves it dark and dead. But if Sylvanas tilts her head and listens, she can still hear the signs of life hidden within it. The night birds, the small creatures running through dead leaves, the whisper of wind as it weaves through the trees. But that is only if she listens hard. It’s there, if she works to find it, if she can pretend for a moment that this is the forests of her youth, wild and free and untamed.

But she remembers. She always remembers in the end.

It takes work to hear the life in it, because the life that should be here runs from her presence. The birds turn silent, the animals turn and run, and even the trees grow cold and quiet, withdrawing so deep into themselves that not even she can sense them. And it doesn’t matter what she does. If she lingers silently for hours it will not change. Nor will it if she hunts each terrified animal down.

She shouldn’t have come here. Sylvanas knows that one fact well. No matter how many nights she spends here, or in any of the other hundred forests she has passed through, the truth never changes. But Sylvanas is so, so weak, and even without dreams her mind whispers to her, brings up long dead memories. Alleria running through Eversong, so light of foot that she never disturbed a single leaf as she ran. Vereesa whispering to the trees when she thought no one was watching. And herself, drowned in life, wasting every opportunity she had, until that she never cherished slipped from her grip.

Sylvanas claws her fingers deep within the tree, until sap wells at her fingers, until she can feel its life flittering at her fingers. She could kill it, if she wanted. If only it would gain a voice to beg, if only it could fall at her feet and weep for its life. If only.

Sylvanas leaves it scarred, but she leaves it whole, and continues her path through the forest, leaving silence in her wake.

The hill is steep enough that it might have challenged her in life, left a fire in her lungs, a challenge burning all the brighter in her mind. In death it is nothing, and she feels nothing more as she climbs it, keeping her eyes glued to the summit, and her mind on anything but the betrayal of nature. Soon enough, the trees give way to low shrubs, to rocks and loose gravel that do their best to betray her too. But it is such a thin challenge to her now, and she makes her way up as if in a dream.

The rock she chooses is dark, and cold, and sharp. It digs bladed edges into her back, in all the gaps in her armour, and there is no comfort to be found lying against it. But it does not run from her, and any attack it gives is unconscious and not made out of malice.

And the stars are too far away to fear her. They may be dead too, or never truly alive, but they burn bright against the unending darkness, just as they did centuries ago. Her lips trace their names, her eyes anchor themselves in them, read ancient directions in their patterns.

Sylvanas still remembers taking Lirath out in the wilderness once, when he was too young to go anywhere alone, and putting the fire out to teach him the stars, which ones would guide him if he was ever lost, and which ones had stories hidden in them, stories older than some of the younger kingdoms.

Time wasted, in the end.

But she still has the memories. The things she taught him, the ways he surprised her. Even if she cannot remember the way his voice sounded, and his face blurs in her mind when she tries to picture it.

One sibling gone, stolen away young. The other hardened her heart towards her, and took the first opportunity to stab her in the back when it arose. The last abandoned her duty for years, and when she returned listened to the whispers of the other sister, and took up hate as well as arms against her.

But Sylvanas still has herself.

She hears the wind play with the rocks, and for a second she has herself convinced that someone has followed her, one of her soldiers shadowing her footsteps to make sure she is alright. In the moment before she reigns her mind back to sense, she thinks it might be Liadrin.

That’s one more memory to haunt her, only this one isn’t contained within her own treacherous mind. But the Liadrin she remembers died long ago, leaving behind only a woman made of stone, hidden behind layer upon layer of steel. And pretending anything else is but a folly.

She had been tempted to go find her tonight, when this mood had possessed her. She was halfway across camp when she paused to think. The Sylvanas of old is long gone, and Liadrin is too, and this new woman, reforged in Light and steel and fire would never treat a corpse with anything but what duty demanded of her.

But Sylvanas had wanted. She had wanted with all the desire of the living for Liadrin to do nothing more than touch her again. She had wanted to be weak, and Liadrin strong. Sylvanas had wanted Liadrin to burn the bitter, corrupting loneliness out of her heart, just for one second. A single second, no more.

And Liadrin would have done it, if Sylvanas had asked her years ago. Maybe she would have done more, if Sylvanas had thought to ask. But she hadn’t, and now Sylvanas doesn’t even have the dying memory to comfort her, only the cold, only the silence, only the distant unchanging stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is a bit of an experiment... let me know what you think of it

**Author's Note:**

> chapter 2 is the important one of the two, i'll upload it in a couple of days


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